Jack McDevitt - Ancient Shores

Devil’s Lake, ND, Mar. 15 (AP)—

A consortium of business interests is reported to be ready to offer fifty million dollars to the Devil’s Lake Sioux for the Johnson’s Ridge property on which the Roundhouse, an archeological find rumored to be of extraterrestrial origin, is located. According to informed sources, the tribal council will meet in extraordinary session tomorrow evening to consider the offer, which has been increased several times over the last few days. Officials on both sides declined to comment.

When they got back to the Northstar, there was a package waiting for Max. “Filters,” he explained. “For the minicam. Maybe we can get a better look at what happens when the lights come on.”

They retreated gloomily to their rooms. But minutes later April appeared at Max’s door.

“Come in,” he said. “I was going to call you.”

She looked frantic. “What do we do?”

There was only one chair in the room. Max left it for her and sat down on the bed. “I don’t think there’s much we can do. Not with all that money out there.”

“Max,” she said, “fifty million’s peanuts. Listen, we may have found a link to somewhere else .” She forced it out, as she might an appeal to the supernatural. “The chair did not just get annihilated. It went somewhere.”

“You think.”

“I think.” She rubbed her forehead wearily. “Did you know there’s a seventh icon?”

“No,” said Max, surprised. “Where?”

“Beside the ditch. Where they used to tie up the boat.”

Max pictured the area. “On one of the posts?”

“Yes. It’s got a design that looks like a kanji character. It doesn’t light up when you touch it. I even tried putting a chair in the ditch, and it still didn’t work. But Max, I think that’s the way they brought the boat in. Directly from wherever .”

Max shook his head. “I’m sorry. But I just can’t buy any of this. You’re talking Star Trek stuff. ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’ ”

They sat and listened to the wind blow.

“I think it’s really true, Max.”

“Well, good luck proving it. Whatever they are, the icons seem to work only once. What good is a long-range transport system that only works once?”

She pulled her legs up onto the chair and hugged her knees. “I think they work only once because the stuff we’ve been sending blocks the reception area. Somebody has to move it and clear the grid on the other end. If they don’t, the system shuts down.”

“That’s the wildest guesswork I’ve ever heard.”

“Max, we watched the chair fade out. It faded . It didn’t blow up. It didn’t disintegrate. It went somewhere. The question is, where?”

Max shook his head. “I think the whole idea is goofy.”

“Maybe.” April took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I think we better tell Arky what we know.”

“You mean, tell him we think we have a portal to another dimension? Or to Mars? He’ll think what I think: It’s goofy.”

Her eyes were pools of despair. “He wouldn’t think that if we did a demonstration for him.”

“What kind of demonstration? All we can do is make things disappear. That doesn’t prove anything.”

Neither of them wanted to state the obvious.

April squeezed her eyes shut. The eternal prairie winds shook the windows. She was unnerved, but the conviction that she was right was going to help her get through it.

She heard a car pull up outside. The doors banged, and voices drifted in.

If there were time, she might have devised a test that would remove some of the risk. But there was no time. She sighed. Use it or lose it.

Through the wall, she could hear the mindless burble of Max’s TV.

What were the dangers?

She might be annihilated. But no piece of the chair had remained, and there was no indication of a violent event. It had simply lost its corporeality. It had gone somewhere .

She might find herself in a hostile environment. For example, in a methane atmosphere. But the visitors had presumably thrived in North Dakota. Surely whatever lay on the other side, through the port, was essentially terrestrial.

She might be stranded. But who ever heard of a port you could enter from only one side?

At midnight she filled her thermos and put two sandwiches and some fruit into a plastic bag. She loaded her camera and pulled on her Minneapolis Twins jacket, feeling pleased with herself. Forty minutes later she passed the police blockade at the access road and drove up the winding incline and out onto the ridge. The glow from the Roundhouse, out of sight in its excavation ditch, seemed brighter tonight. She wondered if it was still charging its batteries and made a mental note to start logging the luminosity.

It was cold, down in the teens. She parked just outside the security gate, opened her glove compartment, and took out a notebook. She sat thinking for several minutes before she knew what she wanted to say. When she’d finished, she laid the notebook open on the passenger seat, picked up a flashlight, and got out.

One of the guards, a middle-aged man whom she knew only as Henry, appeared in the door of the security station. “Good evening, Dr. Cannon,” he said. “Forget something?”

“No, Henry.” Her breath misted in the yellow light of the newly installed high-pressure sodium lamps. “I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d come out and see if I could get some work done.”

He looked at his watch, not without a sense of disapproval. “Okay,” he said. “Nobody else here. From the staff.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

He disappeared back inside. April walked through the gate and went directly into the Roundhouse, shutting the door against the cold.

At night the dome was a patchwork of light and dark, a scattering of illuminated alcoves. The lights shifted and moved as she did, following her, illuminating the ground in front, fading behind. As she approached the grid, it also lit up, spotlighted for her as if the place knew what she intended.

She hesitated. It was just as well Max wasn’t here, because then it would be impossible to back away. And until now she had believed she would back away. But the fear had almost dissipated. Something was out there, waiting for her. The illuminated grid looked both safe and inviting. Time to move out.

She switched on the flashlight and approached the icons. The triggers.

Touch the icon and you get twenty-three seconds to walk over and take your place on the grid.

She looked at the arrow, the rings, and the G clef.

The arrow.

It gleamed in the half-light. She touched the wall, just her fingertips. And pressed.

The light came on.

She took a deep breath, crossed the floor, and stepped onto the grid. The trench that had once been a channel extended out into the shadows. Across the dome, the wall was lost in the dark and the lights faded out and the night went on forever. She hitched the camera strap higher on her shoulder, taking comfort from the mundaneness of the act. She zipped her jacket almost to her neck and fought down a sudden urge to jump off the grid.

It was still dark when the telephone brought Max out of a deep sleep. He rolled over, fumbled for the instrument, picked it up. “Hello?”

“Mr. Collingwood? This is Henry Short. Out at the security gate.”

He immediately came awake. “Yes, Henry? What is it?”

“We can’t find Dr. Cannon,” he said.

He relaxed. “She’s sleeping next door.”